This invention relates to an infant-restraining protective seat of the type placed upon and secured to a seat in a vehicle such as an automobile or airplane and adapted to restrain and protect a seated infant by infant-restraining protecting means such as a seat belt device for infants.
In a vehicle such as an automobile or airplane, restraining protective seats for infants have been used in order to maintain the seated posture of an infant during travel and protect the infant from shock at the time of acceleration and deceleration. An infant restraining and protective seat of this kind has a reclinable seat main body reclinably attached to a base member and adapted to seat an infant, and an infant seat belt device for restraining the seated infant. The infant seat belt device has an infant seat belt, a chest-contact pad attached to the end of the infant seat belt, a tongue provided on the end of the chest-contact pad, and a buckle, provided on the seat main body, capable of holding the tongue in such a manner that the tongue can be freely engaged with and disengaged from the buckle. In a state in which the tongue is engaged with and locked by the buckle, the infant is restrained by the infant seat belt and chest-contact pad.
In the conventional infant-restraining protective seat of this kind, the seat portion for seating the infant and a seat back which supports the back of the seated infant are integrally molded from a resin or the like, and the resulting integrally molded article is reclinably attached to the base portion. Since the seat portion and the seat back are thus formed from an integrally molded article, the conventional infant-restraining protective seat inevitably is large in size.
However, the fact that the infant-restraining protective seat is large in size makes it very difficult to carry and to set up on the seat of the vehicle. In addition, since the protective seat requires a large storage space owing to its large size, it is difficult to keep the seat in storage. Storage space is a major problem especially in vehicles such as automobiles, in which the amount of available space is limited.